Effect of Christmas lights on the night sky

From our foreign correspondent (Northolt)



Fairy light glow obscures transit of Iranian moon vessel

Pictures: A. Mullane copyright © 2007

Willesden Observatory

Don't miss: BBC online iPlayer

"Extras" last episode/Christmas special

If you missed Extras, the final episode/Christmas special, as I nearly did (the only thing I wanted to see over Christmas - well, that and the new Oliver Twist) you can still watch it for another 6 days on the new BBC iPlayer. It's absolutely brilliant. I even want to use an exclamation mark! There! That's how brilliant it is! Oliver Twist is on there as well: I watched it all in one go overnight, when that was repeated on sign zone. (expired)

Update: You can watch everything broadcast by the BBC in the last seven days on iPlayer. (I think it only works if you're in the UK. Can anybody confirm that?) In effect you don't need a television anymore, and you can do your own scheduling. However, there is something good in the feeling of watching a brilliant new production "as it goes out", and knowing that many others are too.

Ossian

Incident in Pakistan

Zoz

Thanks, merry Christmas

To all the readers of the Willesden Herald and especially to the more than 800 writers from all around the world who sent in entries for the Willesden Herald short story competition. Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy Eid al Adha, mid-winter festival - you know yourself. Basically, happy darkest days of the year*.

Postmarks spotted include (in no particular order) all parts of the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, India, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Spain, Japan, China, Trinidad & Tobago, Israel, Nigeria, Pakistan, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Poland, Slovenia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Mauritius and The Philippines. Every single entry was a valiant effort, and the task of reading and judging is both daunting and wonderful. Cheers!

Update
There was an erroneous press release early on, which gave December 24 as the closing date, which was quickly corrected to December 21. Therefore entries received up to and including December 24 have been admitted on the assumption that they got the erroneous press release. Qualification, as stated in the rules, is by date received not by date posted.

P.S.
To the person who sent a bribe: it's on its way back to you in a Christmas card, so keep an eye out for it. Next year the rules will be changed to disqualify anyone who tries that. I suggest you give the money to charity, maybe this one.

Ossian

* In the northern hemisphere only. Terms and conditions apply. Stocks and shares may go down as well as up. Fair words butter no parsnips.

Goodbye to Irish showband legend

Singer Joe Dolan dies in hospital (BBC)



Just when you're wondering if he can make that note, he does it and goes even higher. What strikes me about this rendition of "Danny Boy" is it's a real street singer's version, just like the gypsy (ok tinker - forgive me!) kid with a voice like a bell you can hear any day down Grafton Street in Dublin.

Here he is in his pomp: Good Lookin' Woman. Nobody could wear a brown suit better than this, and believe me I tried.

Feargal Mooney

The real Christmas number 1 - censored by the BBC

The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl



Fairytale of New York. No license required.

Jacintha Pucka

Underground overground

No longer true... (diamond geezer)

[1] There are 12 London Underground lines. No longer true. There are now 11, and will be for the foreseeable future. When the East London line reopens in 2010 it'll be part of the London Overground, not the Underground network.

Hypocrite defects

Tony Blair joins Catholic Church

"Former prime minister Tony Blair has left the Anglican Church to become a Roman Catholic." (BBC)

What a numbskull. "I paid the blood price" Blair and "Shackle mothers giving birth" Widdecombe. They'll be right at home in that gannet roost of maundering old drivel.

Zoz

One for Ridley's Believe it or Not?

Letters

Is it me, or has anybody else noticed that Brent East MP Sarah Teather looks exactly like a character from a James Thurber cartoon?

Niall D., Edgware

Well spotted. We will consider that for a future Believe it or Not. We prefer rocks that look like Geronimo, but if we get really desperate... (Ridley)

Why Morrissey?

It's one of life's mysteries how and why Google decided very kindly and appositely to use a picture of Morrissey to represent Willesden Herald.

Our own Golders Green gal'

Love is a losing game (YouTube)

Best wishes to Amy Winehouse and everyone in distress this Chanukah.

Merry xmas from the London arms fair

Merry xmas from the London arms fair/Twinkle, twinkle little star

Zoz

Crow the bleeding stones

'Justice at last' for 'robbed' pension workers

"The long road to pension victory - Timeline" (Telegraph)

Campaigners had to fight all the way and only after multiple court rulings the government agrees to right this injustice, notorious to all except them, the sorry timeservers.

Zoz

Art scrapyard

"The Arts Council has 7,500 sculptures - why won't it put them somewhere we can see them?" (Germaine Greer | Guardian Unlimited Arts)

I like her idea to put them in the grounds of schools and hospitals. Not so crazy about putting them along the motorways. Ok if you have a chauffeur, maybe.

Zoz

Armstrong, Miller, Joly, Tate...etc. etc.

I wonder if these comedic nonentities ever consider the ultimate effects of their anti-teacher, anti-old-people, anti-youth, anti-life routines? We may never discover the real meaning of life but I doubt it will turn out to be about being an arrogant, cynical rat-fink.

Zoz

Policy Exchange think tank: forged evidence

LENIN'S TOMB: Muslims - not coming after all.

"BBC Newsnight has taken a holiday and decided to investigate some news - credit where it's due, they've come up with the goods. The story in question is the revelation that this year's Policy Exchange report on Islam in the UK was a dangerous fraud (----watch here----). It transpires that one of the key elements of the report - an alarmist claim that a quarter of UK mosques sell 'hate literature' (which is still well below the 100% rate at which UK newsagents sell hate literature) - was backed up by a bunch of phoney receipts, suggesting that the researchers had confected evidence for a pre-conceived thesis."

Fascinating BBC report exposes the recent claims that mosques were selling "hate literature", as based on falsified evidence. The forgeries are exposed by a forensic scientist engaged by the BBC, in the face of a 9-page legal letter from Policy Exchange threatening to sue. In the film, as the forensic scientist works you can see shadow writing (in the same hand) of different forged receipts, supposedly from different places, which were written on top of each other. Additionally the receipts investigated are poor-quality inkjet printed forgeries, completely unlike their real counterparts, and contain spelling and address errors.

Remember, the Policy Centre report caused quite a bit anxiety and probably stirred up hatred. Now it is revealed as a sham.

Zoz

Rat

After seven years, Dutch diplomat puts adopted daughter back up for adoption

What a louser.

Zoz

The sayings of Red Woodward

recollected by Feargal Mooney

Our aim is to deliver tomorrow's news yesterday.

Never trust anybody honest.

You scratch your back and we'll scratch ours.

In this life you get what you receive.

We are not about to go bang.

Very funny, air traffic controllers...

Now stop playing noughts and crosses in the sky.

Ridley's Believe it or Not (No. 4)

By a fantastic coincidence two readers photographed exactly the same phenomenon at almost exactly the same time on Friday (December 7th.)



The sky over Harlesden Road at 4 p.m. this evening [Friday]. (Picture: Patsy, Willesden)



The same spectacle seen over Northolt at the same time. (Picture: A. Mullane)

<< Previous | Next >>

Herbert Ridley

What ever happened to Pinocchio?

Shelter (UK) | Simon Communities (Irl)

Fungi tree*

Donnington Road

Sphagnum

* Fun Boy Three? Ed

Who are these people?

At film premieres in Leicester Square, London this year

Pictures: Alex Suarez

Honouring the Land Girls

BBC - Radio 4 - PM

"A badge commemorating the service of the Land Army and the Women's Timber Corps will be presented to surviving members."

An interview with Hilda Gibson, who was one of the Land Girls, and a poem by her. This is a somewhat horrifying at first, then funny and ultimately touching interview and poem, which has inspired a big reaction from Radio 4 listeners. Well worth a listen.

Ossian

Beverley Knight - The Queen Of Starting Over (Live)

This is the company song here at Herald House. Star jumps to this every morning. This live (official) version is better than the record, I think. The divine Beverley is held back somewhat on the record, as if some nerd in the background has said, "Whoa! tone it down." Death to that nerd.

Here's an official Beatles release from the new DVD of "Help!", You've Got to Hide Your Love Away. I think you'll find that, like Wilfred Bramble [He's not in Help, duh. Ed], it's "very clean".



You don't get this with your other boring newspapers do you? All the official artist releases right here. Check my other favourites here.

Jacintha Pucka

Willesden prize results 2008, a Liars' League production

Writers write. Actors read. Audience listens. Everybody wins. Liars’ League is a monthly night of new short stories by rising authors, read by professional actors. With 90 minutes of fiction for only £3, literature as entertainment has never been so good. (Liars' League)

Announcing the Willesden short story prize results event 2008 in association with Liars' League. [How strangely appropriate. Ed] The results event will take place from 8 pm on Thursday, February 28, 2008 at The Space, Willesden, with actors from the Liars' League line-up reading excerpts from the winning and short-listed entries. Details to follow.

Ossian